Food chemical safety: The need for a new 'whole food' approach?

摘要

Currently the approaches, which are used to determine the safety of chemicals, which are present in food, derive from the application of techniques which have been developed for the assessment of the safety of chemicals in general. Each chemical is independently assessed by the application of a complex and elaborate series of in vitro and in vivo bioassays from which a dose-response relationship can be inferred. Since only toxic effects are sought groups of animals are exposed to increasing doses of the chemical at levels up to a maximum tolerated dose (MTD), which is a dose which does not result in more than a 10% reduction in body weight over the animal's lifetime These doses are invariably orders of magnitude greater than those to which a human would be exposed to in their food.